More than three years ago a worried Conservative made a plea on these very pages. Donald Cameron, then a freshman MSP, begged online hotheads to dial down their rhetoric on Gaelic.
“Far too often, debates about the language descend into proxy battles over completely unrelated issues,” he wrote in The Herald. “The constitution is a particular culprit, especially on social media. Gaelic is frequently appropriated as a quasi-nationalist cause on the one hand or attacked by unionist ultras on the other.”
Mr Cameron was not talking to one side and he was not talking for one side. After all, serious people across Scottish politics have been concerned about the Gaelophobia for years.